


Eyes Wide Open; Never Shut

by Multifandom_damnation



Series: The Power of Potential [1]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Gen, Headaches & Migraines, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Torture, Past Relationship(s), Team as Family, Visions in dreams
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2019-07-28 14:19:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16243403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: “Francisco, what do you see?” H.R was by his side then, kneeling close to Cisco and placing a hand on his arm. “Tell me what you’re seeing.”In a final, futile effort to end the pain, Cisco opened his eyes again and was met with H.R, coated in sapphire blue hues. “Everything.” He managed through teeth grit in misery before his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he collapsed on the ground, quivering in a heap.





	Eyes Wide Open; Never Shut

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry, I've had to re-upload this but it's the same exact fic x

There were very few constants when it came to Cisco Ramon. He always kept a pack of lollypops hidden somewhere in his car. He always came to work with a Jitters take away mug in his hands. He will eat almost anything you give him. And you can always tell when he’s gone home and when he hasn’t.

You can always tell by what he’s wearing. You can never judge by his t-shirt. He keeps a stash hidden everywhere, his desk drawer at S.T.A.R Labs, the top shelf in Barry’s laundry, the lift-up seat of his car.  No, you need to tell by the pants and overshirt his wearing- if it’s the same on as the day before, it means he hasn’t left the lab.

So when Barry walks into S.T.A.R Labs to Cisco picking a pillow up off the floor, wearing the same pants and flannel overshirt that he’s worn for the past two days, he knew they were about to have a problem. “Come on man, how many times do we need to tell you to go sleep in your own bed at home?”

Huffing, Cisco threw the pillow back into the med bay where it promptly landed on the floor and stretched his hands above his head. “What’s the point? By the time I finish work here, it’s almost time to wake up anyway. No point going home when I need to be here in a few hours.”

Rolling his eyes, Barry walked around the console in the Cortex as Caitlin strolled up to Cisco and scowled. “You,” she said, poking Cisco in the chest. “Need to learn to take better care of yourself.”

“Why? That’s what I have you for.” Cisco grinned, darting away before Caitlin could slap him.

“You won’t be saying that when you get hurt in the field and your ‘doctor’ is too busy to patch you up,” Caitlin called, singsong after him.

Grimacing at the thought, Cisco bounded up to Barry and clapped a hand on his shoulder. “How’s Wally?”

Sighing, Barry took his jacket off and hung it over the back of a desk chair before turning around to face his friend. “I think he’ll be alright. You know, speedster recovery and all that. He might be coming by later tonight, actually.”

Beaming, Cisco turned away from Barry and slid into his computer chair at the console. “That’s great. I miss him, it’s too quiet around here without him.”

There was something about Cisco that had Barry on edge and as he looked closer, Barry could see that Cisco’s smile was too stained, his eyes squinting to the point of pain. “Hey man, are you alright?”

“Yeah, just haven’t been sleeping well lately,” Cisco reassured.

“Maybe that could be fixed if you went home every now and then instead of sleeping on the floor!” Caitlin called from the med-bay, repositioning the pillow Cisco had thrown on the ground and putting it back on the bed where it belonged.

“How do you know that I was sleeping on the floor though?” Cisco asked as he booted up the computers. “You’re just guessing.”

A voice rang out from the hallway behind them, accompanied by two sets of footsteps. “You wearing the same clothes you wore yesterday,” Iris said as she walked into the Cortex, her dad a step behind her with his hands in his pockets. Iris placed her handbag on one of the spare counters before going over to join Cisco’s side at the console.

“And you look like crap,” Joe observed, catching Barry’s eye and sending him a look filled with fatherly concern. Barry could only shrug in response. “Have you been having nightmares?”

“…no?” The pause was a little too long to be convincing but Joe let it go when Cisco turned back to Caitlin. “Speaking of dreams, I had one of Killer Frost last night. It might have been a vibe though- I’ve been having ones in my sleep more often lately.”

“What was she doing?” Caitlin asked, returning from her trip to the med-bay.

Cisco shrugged. “Saved my life I think. I’m not all too sure though. Was kind of blurry.” Spinning around in his chair, Cisco yawned, as if he hadn’t just woken up a few minutes ago. “Yo, Barry. Do you want to do some training before patrol or do you just want to wait for an alarm?”

“No, no, we can train now. Deal with meta’s later.” Barry said absently as he watched Cisco. “You sure you’re alright man?”

Snorting, Cisco stood, patting Barry on the shoulders as he passed him and made his way to the training room. “Of course man. No need to worry, nothing that opening a few hundred breaches for you to run through won’t fix, huh?” He was gone before Barry could ask any more questions and he had no choice but to follow.

The day ended with Barry exhaustingly stripping from his Flash suit and collapsing in a nearby chair with the suit laid across his lap. “Cisco, have I ever thanked you for making this suit heat resistant?”

“You haven’t recently but hey, you haven’t had to run into any burning buildings recently so I’ll let it slide.” Cisco joked, taking his suit from Barry’s lap and putting it up on the model where it belongs. “Did we get him?”

Yawning, Joe entered the room, Caitlin and Iris behind him. “He’s in the Pipeline,” Joe reassured as he leant heavily against the console. “Damn pyromaniac isn’t getting out anytime soon. When do you think he’ll need to be transported to Iron Heights?”

“That’s a problem for another day,” Caitlin laughed. “I need to go home, make sure H.R hasn’t built anything out of my plumbing. We should all go home, get some sleep. All of us.” She glared at the back of Cisco’s head but even without looking he knew that the words were meant for him.

Checking his watch, Cisco shook his head. “Not tonight. I still need to configure the crap we figured out today and input his stats into my database before we send him to Iron Heights. I might as well stay here.”

Barry sighed. “Cisco, come on.”

“How about a deal.” Cisco reasoned, backing away from Caitlin as she approached him with her ‘you’re in trouble look’. “I’ll sleep on a _bed_ today and then I promise I’ll go home tomorrow night.”

Raising her hands and twisting them as though she were about to wring his neck, Caitlin sighed as she resigned herself to the idea. “You need to start taking better care of yourself.” She told him.

“I will start tomorrow.” Cisco smiled. “Now everyone, get out of here. Go home. Tell Wally I hope he feels better and that I’ll come past as some point with doughnuts from that place he likes. Barry, I hope I don’t need to remind you how to take care of those burns.”

Laughing, Iris walked up and gave Cisco a goodnight hug. “We get it Cisco; you don’t need to worry about us so much. Worry about yourself for a change.”

“No can do,” Cisco said as Iris walked away to be replaced with a very tired Barry who mostly rested his weight on Cisco and then Caitlin who lingered a little longer and also gave him a peck on the cheek. “If I’m not here to worry about you then what’s the point of me being here at all?”

As they all left and shouted out goodbyes, Cisco smiled and went about the business of uploading and fixing files and shutting down computers before he made his way into the med bay- after deciding that the spare rooms downstairs being too far away- and laid his head down to sleep.

It started with a headache and dimly Cisco wondered how he could ever get a headache in a dream. Then he realised that everything was immersed in blue and there were images moving rapidly past him. The feeling of water running over his chest that he had begun to associate with vibing refused to go away and Cisco knew at that moment that somehow he was vibing in his dreams.

There was a woman standing a few feet away but when Cisco called out to her, she didn’t answer and Cisco found he couldn’t move, so he stayed where he was and waited. He paid close attention to the images- things he’d vibed and things he hadn’t.

Dr Light walking through the train station. Reverse Flash about to kill Tina McGee. Zoom removing his hood. Kendra with her wings. Barry screaming at Savitar to leave Iris alone. Killer Frost trying to kill him.

He also saw things he was sure he had never seen before. The Green Arrow falling unconscious from a building. Barry being thrown across a tarmac. Cynthia falling through a breach and onto the floor of S.T.A.R Labs. Lava dripping from a ceiling. His home being destroyed in a whirlwind. A lightning storm hovering over S.T.A.R Labs. The real Jay Garrek lying unconscious by Cisco’s feet. A man with vibe blasts of a toxic green meeting Cisco’s blue ones.

The woman had turned to face him now, but her face was obscured by her red hair that was blowing with the force of some sort of wind. Cisco’s headache was getting stronger. _“You must be confused.”_ Her voice was soft and ethereal as if it came from a holy place and travelled here on the wind.

“Hell yeah, I’m confused lady, where the hell am I and when can I go home?” Cisco called, voice desperately trying to be heard over the wind whereas the woman seemed to be having no issues. Maybe it was intended for Cisco to only listen to what she had to say. “Who are you?”

 _“I don’t have a name. Yet I am everyone and everywhere. Do you know why you are here, Cisco?”_ She didn’t give him a chance to reply with any of his snarky remarks. _“It is because you do not yet realise your full potential and what you can do.”_

“What the hell are you talking about?” Cisco yelled, fighting against an invisible force to take a step closer. “I feel like every whack job we meet is telling me how powerful I am.”

Continuing as though Cisco hadn’t spoken, she waved a delicate hand at the rapidly passing images. _“This is just a fragment of who you are- vibing locations of people is simple compared to everything else.”_ She paused and when Cisco blinked, she was suddenly right in front of him, holding his hands but the feeling didn’t register. _“You can see the immediate future, if you tried hard enough, and could see every next action your foe would make.”_

“Why are you telling me this? If I haven’t done it yet isn’t it safe to assume I won’t be doing it at all?” Cisco asked, still battling the wind. For some reason, he didn’t feel the need to pull his hands away. Her hands were warm and soft and tiny in his large ones filled with rough callouses from working with tools and machinery.

Her voice was like silk and carried as if she were close enough to whisper in his ear. “ _You can make the earth tremble and buildings quake. You can stop speedsters in their tracks. You can take the Speed Force from their bodies forever or replace it once again. You can send enemies to other worlds if you so wished. You can shatter nervous systems and turn bones to ash within a body. You can sense the energy of other dimensional sensations. You leave an imprint behind on any world you step on. You have no need of your toys and trinkets- your goggles and your gauntlets- to control or access your powers. You have never needed them.”_

Cisco tried to step away but found once again he couldn’t move. The images passing by were going faster and faster. His headache began to pound behind his eyes and split his skull in two. “What are you talking about?”

_“You are the most powerful being in the multiverse, Francisco. You just don’t know it.”_

“What are you going to do to me? Why am I here?”

_“You are here so I can show you how to get stronger.”_

“Why do you need me to get stronger?”

Her laugh was like wind chimes in the spring. _“I do not_ need _you to be stronger. It’s so you can realise your full potential. So you can be more than who you are. So you can grow into something better.”_

“I think I’m happy with how I am, thanks.” Cisco could feel himself going into hysterics but at the moment he didn’t really care.

_“You do not understand. You don’t have a choice. You have not found your true power alone as I thought you would- now, it is time for me to intervene.”_

It was getting hard to talk with his blood flow echoing in his ears. “What are you going to do to me?” he asked again, voice shaking. He knew now that this wasn’t _just_ a dream and that this wasn’t _just_ a headache. He could feel the pain pulsing through his entire body, beating his bones like a drum.

She laughed again and suddenly the wind stopped and her hair rested gently over her shoulders. _“Nothing too drastic. I’m just going to give you a little… push.”_

Slowly, she reached a hand up as if giving him a chance to refuse but Cisco suddenly found that he couldn’t speak let alone move. Her hand came down gently on his forehead and a soft glow shone from her fingers.

Immediately, his body exploded in white-hot agony and he was ripped from the woman’s grasp in the blue-hued world and was lying the bed in the med bay.

He was screaming, the sound leaving his throat without any of his conscious thought as his hands reached up to grip his head. It was as if his mind was being ripped in two and his lungs were falling to pieces. Every nerve of his body was on fire, every vein pumping liquid agony through his body.

Cisco fell to the floor of the med bay, gasping as his body desperately tried to take in air. He crawled his way into the Cortex, making it to the middle where he had slept the night previous before collapsing into a writhing heap on the cool white floor.  The lights turned on as he entered and the pure white of the fluorescence burned his eyes as he mustered the courage when he tried to open them.

The room flickered, at times the normal white of the Cortex and sometimes the once familiar blue of a vibe. Cisco was looking at different worlds, separate Cisco's on other worlds. There was a short-haired Cisco having lunch with a tattooed blonde woman in a leather jacket. There was a Cisco in a business suit and glasses holding a clipboard. There was a Cisco covered in scars and blood and chained to a wall. There was a Cisco wearing a gas mask and walking through thick smog. There was a Cisco throwing punches against a wall. Every time he blinked, Cisco could see through the very fabric of time and follow along with the lives of his multiverse selves.

He could see the stars. Every star in every galaxy in every world rushed past his vision as his body grasped for life. He watched nebulas being born and stars exploding in a burst of heat and light. He watched planets rotate around their suns and their moons line up behind it. It would have been beautiful if Cisco currently wasn’t in blazing torture.

It wasn’t just himself that he could see. There was Iris standing on the moon. Joe in a wrestlers ring. Wally leaping over buildings dressed all in black. Caitlin spinning in Ronnie’s arms as they skated on ice. Barry, nothing but a pale grey tombstone and a monument in Central City square. Dante standing on a stage as he laughed and played his piano to a crowd of millions-

Cisco sobbed, had probably been doing it for a while now, as his body shook and managed to sit upright. He needed help. He needed to call somebody but the room was swimming dangerously and he had left his phone charging in the med bay. Glancing at the Cortex controls, Cisco suddenly realised the only thing he could do.

With his last burst of strength, Cisco reached over and hit the big red emergency button that was flashing on the console.

Red lights began flashing throughout the whole of S.T.A.R Labs, a loud ringing noise announcing the danger in the Cortex filtering through the speaker system. Cisco knew that an alert was being sent to everyone’s phones and he had never been so glad for his foresight.

Not long later, Barry arrived in a breeze of yellow lightning, Joe and Iris held in his arms. Wally arrived after them, Caitlin clutching tightly to his shirt. “Cisco!” Barry shouted, looking around the Cortex. “What’s-“

He stopped once he saw Cisco, having fallen back onto the ground with his hands clutching his head, moaning and squirming. Images burst behind his eyes- face’s he’s never seen, children he’s never met, villains he’s never named.

“Oh my god, what’s happening to him?” Caitlin asked as she came around the desk. Her hands were covering her mouth and her eyes were wet with tears. Barry reached over and turned off the alarm, the droning siren and the red lights vanishing abruptly. Caitlin turned to the others, still in shock. “Wally, can you go get H.R from my house?” Nodding, Wally darted off and returned a moment later.

Kneeling down, Barry placed his hands on either side of Cisco’s head. “Cisco, can you hear me?” Cisco nodded shakily as his mind turned to sludge. “Can you open your eyes?”

Slowly, painfully, Cisco managed to crack his eyes open a little. The pain was unbearable. The _voices_ were unbearable. He heard Barry gasp and suddenly he could see it- see the Speed Force flowing through his and Wally’s bodies, thrumming in their veins like glistening galaxies. Cisco could feel it underneath his fingertips, buzzing. Vibrating.

“Guys, his eyes.” He heard Barry say and Cisco quickly closed them in fear of what else might be happening to him. “The pupils are _gold.”_

Cisco fell back to the ground, clawing at his skin and pulling at his hair as he desperately tried to get the pain to stop and the noise to silence. He moaned something and he heard himself scream again but he could hardly hear it. Everything felt so far away that it didn’t matter. Had it ever mattered? Cisco couldn’t remember.

“Francisco, what do you see?” H.R was by his side then, kneeling close to Cisco and placing a hand on his arm. Cisco could feel the blood pumping from his heart, the different vibration that marked someone from another earth. “Tell me what you’re seeing.”

In a final, futile effort to end the pain, Cisco opened his eyes again and was met with H.R, coated in sapphire blue hues. “ _Everything_.” He managed through teeth grit in misery before his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he collapsed on the ground, quivering in a heap.

Cisco’s eyes closed as Caitlin screamed and backed away so Joe could come to Cisco’s side. “Let’s get him off the floor.” He suggested. “Caitlin, do you have somewhere we can take him?”

Shaking, Caitlin led them back into the med bay, Joe and Barry carrying Cisco between them. The bed Cisco had slept in was still messy and unmade, the pillow still had the indent of his head. “Lay him here.” She said as she began preparing the IV drips and medical equipment.

“He’s going into some sort of shock; we have to strap him down.” H.R rushed into the med bay with Wally and Iris who immediately began digging through drawers to look for the equipment. “How the hell did this happen?”

“I don’t know man; he was acting really strange today. I thought he was just tired.” Barry helped Joe hold him down while Wally wrapped leather bands around Cisco’s legs and torso. “I’ve never seen this happen and I’ve definitely never seen his eyes go _gold_ like that.”

“We should have made sure he was fine before we left him,” Caitlin fretted as she inserted the IV drip and began to check his vitals. “This might never have happened if we had been here with him, or if he’d gone home.”

“Caitlin, none of this is your fault,” Iris reassured as she brought wet towels to dab on Cisco’s forehead, her heels clicking loudly against the polished tile floor.

Wally sped over and helped keep Cisco down. “Yeah, and besides, we might not know right now if he had gone home. If he was in so much pain he wasn’t able to call us, then I guess it’s a good thing he stayed so he could press the panic button.”

Nodding in resignation, Caitlin went about the process of checking vitals and keeping Cisco alive. “H.R, when you asked him what he saw, what did he say?”

H.R took a step back so Caitlin could approach the bedside and ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. ‘Everything’. That makes no sense.”

“It does if he’s a breacher.” A voice said from behind him and the team turned to watch Cynthia walk through the med bay door as a breach closed behind her. “Someone as powerful as Cisco? I’m surprised it didn’t happen earlier. Though I’m not sure as to why he’s in so much pain.”

Rushing up to her, Barry grabbed her arms as Wally moved into Barry’s now-vacated position. “Do you know what’s happening to him? Do you know how to help him?”

Cynthia shook her head. “I’ve never seen this happen before. But his eyes changed colour- he’s realised his full potential. But it’s almost as if he was forced. This shouldn’t be happening.”

“Why are you here?” Joe asks unkindly. “I don’t know why you’d come after you broke his heart like you did.”

“I vibed him.” Cynthia said, ignoring Joe’s tone. “We’re connected- I always come when he needs me, the same as he would come for me.” Walking forward, Cindy gently lifted one of Cisco’s eyelids and yanked her hand away with a gasp. “Gold.” She breathed. “He’s more powerful than I thought.”

“Why did his eyes change colour?” Iris questioned as she came up to check Cisco’s pulse. “They’ve never done that before.”

Before Cynthia could reply, the room began to pulse and the floor began to vibrate. “Something has happened to bring forth the powers that he’s been suppressing.” She muttered as she looked around the room. Harry moved away and picked up one of their guns, aiming it at the door. “Put that down. Cisco is the one shaking the earth.”

“But Cisco can’t do that!” Barry exclaimed.

Cynthia swivelled her head around to glare at him. “You are foolish, speedster. I would have thought you of all people would understand how afraid Cisco is of his powers. He has been repressing them- he can do all of this and so much more.”

“Like what?” Caitlin placed the back of her hand on Cisco’s forehead to check his temperature and winced at the heat. She darted off to find the device they used to measure brain activity.

Slowly, Cynthia held every person in the med bay with a cold, calculating stare as hard as stone. “He can remove the Speed Force from your very bodies. And fragment your nervous system and crush your bones to dust in the blink of an eye. He can squash all of your organs at once. We are not weak beings used for nothing but transportation. We could be gods- but only the most corrupt few decide to follow that path.”

The energy in the room seemed to grow stagnant as there was no sound save for Cisco’s thrashing against the bed, his desperate moans of pain and the beeping of his heart monitor. Suddenly, a crack appeared under his bed and H.R was the first to react. “Snow, you need to sedate him.” Everyone turned to look at him but it was obvious H.R was being deathly serious. “He cannot be allowed to continue to destroy this place. He is suffering- I don’t know why but he is. It would be better to let him sleep in a drug-induced sleep pain-free than to be half awake and in agony.”

Silently, Caitlin pulled a needle from a drawer, uncapped it and after removing all the air, inserted the needle into the IV drip and pushed the plunger. Slowly, Cisco’s thrashing stopped and his moaning tapered off into quiet whimpers. The ground stopped shaking.

Joe and Wally moved away from Cisco slowly, as if afraid that he would move again if they went too far. Iris sank down into a desk chair, hand in her hair. H.R leaned against the wall as Cynthia stared sadly at Cisco. Barry moved quickly to Caitlin and gave her a tight hug as she moved the strands of hair out of Cisco’s face.

“I don’t think any of us are going home tonight,” Joe observed, out of breath. Nobody had the energy to point out the absurdity of the statement. “Let’s tuck him in- we’ll take shifts keeping an eye.”

Though they all knew the words held merit, no one could muster the courage to look away from their friend, lying still on the bed. “I wonder what happened,” Caitlin whispered, resting a hand on Cisco’s arm. “I’m so worried.”

“There’s nothing we can do for him right now.” H.R sighed, pretending not to watch Cisco’s chest rise and fall from the other side of the room. “But I agree- I don’t think he should be alone tonight. I don’t think any of us should after a scare like that.”

A flash of electricity and Wally was dropping a bundle of pillows and blankets on the floor of the med bay. Everyone looked at him like he was insane. “My mum and I used to do this all the time when one of us was sick.” He explained. “Sleepover. Pillow fort. We can all be together and be near Cisco at the same time.”

Iris walked over to Wally and placed a kiss on his cheek. “That’s a great idea, Wally.” She praised, helping Caitlin pull the rest of the sheets off of the other beds in the med bay, dropping them onto the floor to join the steadily growing pile.

“You should stay too,” Barry told Cynthia as she turned away. “He’d want to see you once he wakes up- I’m sure you’d be a welcome sight after not seeing each other for as long as you have.”

Despite every fibre of her being telling her not to, Cynthia paused and looked at Barry over her shoulder. “What makes you think he’d want to see me?”

Chuckling without humour, Barry reached an arm out to spin Cynthia around. “He still loves you, Cindy. He’s always loved you. And you came when you knew he was in trouble even though you didn’t have to. That means a lot. Not just to him, but to all of us as well. With you here, maybe we can help him figure out what’s going on. Train him to use his powers better. Help him talk about things he sees.” He levelled Cynthia with a narrow stare. “Help him learn to no longer be afraid of that which is a part of him.”

With a small nod and a tight smile, Cynthia let Barry lead her back to the pile of blankets resting around Cisco’s bed where the others were already lying and she allowed him to pull her down onto the softly padded floor where she fell asleep to Cisco’s ragged breathing- a welcome sound she hadn’t realised she’s missed as much as she apparently had.

When Cisco woke up the first thing he noticed was that the agonizing pain had lessened into a dull ache and that when he looked around the room it was the same, ordinary medical white of S.T.A.R Labs, not something bathed in blue. He was starting to get really tired of blue.

The second thing Cisco noticed was all the needles dug into his arms and the medical equipment stuck all over his body. The sheets from the other medical beds were gone and someone that definitely wasn’t him was snoring.

He groaned as he tried to sit upright and he rubbed his eyes with his thumb. “Ow,” he muttered as he blinked spots away from his eyes. He didn’t know what time it was but he was pretty sure people were supposed to be here right now. Louder, he called “Guys?”

Almost immediately, the rest of the team sprung up from the floor, pillows and blankets flying everywhere and before he could blink, they were all surrounding Cisco’s bed and bombarding him with questions.

“Yeah, I uh, I think I’m alright,” Cisco answered quietly as he ran a hand down his face. He felt numb and thought that maybe Caitlin had injected him with morphine. “What happened? I don’t remember coming back to bed.”

Caitlin gently and her fingers through Cisco’s hair and he found himself leaning into her touch. “When you hit the panic button we all came over as fast as we could and found you screaming on the floor.” Her voice was soft as if she were afraid that any loud sounds would make the pain worse. “Your eyes were gold. You told us you were seeing everything but none of that makes sense.”

Blinking, Cisco tried to remember what had happened but the only thing he could think back on was images drowning in blue and things that would haunt his nightmares for days to come. “Gold…? That’s never happened before.” He dropped his head into his hands. “Uh, what did that crazy lady do to me?”

“Crazy lady?” H.R repeated, confused. “You spoke with a crazy lady?”

“Yeah man, came to me in my dream,” Cisco explained, rubbing his temples to rid himself from the last of the remaining pain. “Told me I had potential that I was holding back and stuff and she told me I needed a ‘push’ to get my powers going. She tapped me on the head and when I woke up I felt like I was being deep fried.”

Frowning, Cynthia moved forward and Cisco felt his breath catch. “A woman? There have never been reports of any woman contacting breachers in their dreams. What did she look like?”

“Uh r-redhead and pretty and her hands were small- I’m sorry, what are you doing here?” Cisco was not in the right mindset to find his filter and he narrowed his eyes in suspicion at her. “I didn’t do anything wrong, did I? Does your dad want me dead because we broke up?”

Chuckling slightly, Cynthia gently ran her fingers over the back of Cisco’s hand. “No Cisco. Nothing like that.”

Narrowing his eyes, Cisco turned his attention to the rest of the group now standing anxiously at the end of his bed. “I’ve been having vibes in my dreams but last night was nothing _but_ a vibe. It was like being at the movies and having the previews going on fast forward.”

“Did you recognise any of the vibes?” Joe asked.

Cisco nodded slowly. “Some of them I did. Others were things I hadn’t seen before.”

“Like what?” Wally asked. Cisco looked away from them and tried to memorise the patterns in the bedspread and count every individual strand of hair that was falling into his eyes. No, he couldn’t tell them, no matter what, he couldn’t tell them what he’d seen. Couldn’t tell them about what he knew about their multiverse selves or what might happen in the future.

The room fell silent as they waited for Cisco’s answer and vaguely Cisco realised that he was stalling. “I uh, saw into the multiverse and watched moments of my doppelganger’s lives.” Someone choked on their spit and turned away to cough. Someone gasped so sharply that Cisco could feel the pain in his own throat. Or maybe that was the residue from screaming the night before. “All across the multiverse. I was watching different versions of myself do normal everyday things.”

“Is that all?” H.R asked, suspicious. Damn him for always seeing through Cisco’s lies. “You told me you’d seen ‘everything’. That doesn’t really sound like everything.”

“I could see stars as well. Like, not just the stars in our galaxy but the galaxies of every earth in the multiverse. Some had two moons, some had blue suns. It was… amazing.” Cisco spared a glance at Barry and Wally who very obviously caught the look. “I could see the Speed Force in your bodies. It was buzzing under my fingertips like it was calling to me. The lady in my dream told me that I have a special connection to the Speed Force and that I can rip it out of your bodies if I wanted.”

Both Barry and Wally shared a glance before they began shifting uncomfortably where they stood. Cisco ignored them for a moment and looked to H.R. “I could feel the vibrations in your body. You know how you’re always telling me that people from your Earth vibrate at a different frequency than those on this one? I could feel the way you vibrate. On a physical level- I could feel it under your skin.”

Slowly, he faced the rest and Joe, Iris and Caitlin visibly shifted. “I could see your internal organs and I could feel your nervous system. I could hear the way your heart beats and pumped blood around your body. It felt so… fragile. Like I could just reach out and touch it and it would be destroyed without me trying.”

Cisco couldn’t hear the detachment in his own voice but Cynthia exchanged a worried glance with the others as Cisco began describing things that shouldn’t be possible as if remembering a special offer that was being held at Jitters. “Cisco, this is unbelievable. Do you know how powerful you must be in order for your eyes to _change colour?_ My father isn’t even that powerful. There have only been a few breachers in history who…”

Cindy’s words faded out as Cisco’s world was once again bathed in blue and he gasped. He was no longer in a bed in the med bay but in his workshop and he watched himself lower shakily into a chair. There was blood dripping down his legs and his arms were lacerated with cuts. There was a gash through his Vibe suit and Cisco watched as his vibe-self went through the beginning stages of a panic attack. His vibe-self took a deep breath, reared his head back and shouted “Barry!” and there was a flash of lightning and a woman’s scream of fear and-

There was a hand on his shoulder and someone was shaking him. “Cisco, you in there?” Joe was by his side. “Was it a vibe?”

“Yeah, it was.” Cisco took a deep breath, calming his nerves before he could have a panic attack of his own. “Nothing happened. I’m alright.”

“You seem shaken,” Iris observed. “More than normal. Are you sure everything’s all right?”

Smiling a smile, he hoped was reassuring, Cisco leaned back against the pillows that someone had bundled up behind his head. “I’m absolutely sure. Nothing to worry about. But my head still kind of hurts, I think I’m going to get some more sleep. You think you can give me some more of that morphine Cait? I never knew how good this stuff was for dealing with a head-splitting headache.”

Breathing a laugh, Caitlin bent down to place a gentle kiss on Cisco’s forehead. “We’ll see. It depends on how much pain you’re in. For now, we’ll let you sleep and I’ll be right here when you wake up to make sure you have everything you need.” She winked at him and Cisco beamed. “If that involves a little more morphine, then I’ll see what I can do.”

Cisco exhaled a sigh of relief. “You, Miss Snow, are a lifesaver.” He glanced at Cynthia and felt a blush light his cheeks- which was stupid. “Will you…?” He left the question unasked.

“I will be here when you wake up,” Cynthia reassured as she brushed her thumb over Cisco’s hand one last time before pulling away fully. “I will only leave when you want me to and not a second before.”

“Man, just get some rest.” Barry smiled, placing a hand on Cisco’s foot. “You’ve done more than enough. We’ll take care of everything else today and when you wake up, you can finish telling us about the crazy lady. Alright?”

“Yeah, alright.” Cisco smiled back as Barry removed his hand.

Iris stepped walked around the bed and picked up another blanket from the floor, laying it across Cisco as an added layer of warmth. “Now it’s time for us to look after you for a change, huh?” She quipped as she moved to stand beside Caitlin. “We can worry about you instead of the other way around.

As Joe made for the door he called out over his shoulder. “I’m going to go get us all some coffee but when I come back, I’ll make you some of my famous chicken noodle soup.”

Cisco licked his lips at the thought at Joe chuckled at him as he left the med bay. H.R nodded reassuringly at him and Wally shook his hand in a half-hug gesture as everyone else cleared out of the room one by one. “I’ll be here if you need me.” H.R said as he left and Cisco could see his figure standing crossed-arms against the glass.

He turned his attention to Cindy who had remained in the room as the only person left. She was gazing down at Cisco with a look he couldn’t identify- or maybe he just didn’t want to. “Why did you come, Cynthia? Why are you here?”

Sitting down in one of the chairs beside the bed so they could be closer in eye-level, Cynthia smiled slightly. “You know that we’re connected. I vibed you in pain and I… I couldn’t just leave it. I needed to come. I didn’t even think about whether you would want to see me or not but I needed to be here. I couldn’t let you go through a pain like that alone.”

“Well, it means a lot to me that you came.” Cisco returned the smile. “I’m really glad you did. I don’t know how well this whole thing would have gone without you here. It was… really awful. But now that you’re here, we can start working out how to fix this and what it all means, right?”

Cynthia’s smile turned sad as she bent over to place a chaste kiss on Cisco’s forehead, hiding the tears his words brought. “Your friends are right; you should get some rest. And I was telling the truth before- I won’t leave here unless you ask me to. I’ll be just outside when you wake up.”

The creaking of the chair and the retreating heavy footsteps of steel capped leather boots indicated Cynthia’s exit and Cisco regretted instantly not saying anything when he had the chance. Turning over onto his side, Cisco closed his eyes and immediately fell asleep to the voice of an ethereal red-headed woman suffused in blue.

_“You are the most powerful being in the multiverse, Francisco. You just don’t know it.”_


End file.
